Internet Forensics - Download

This practical guide to defending against Internet fraud gives you the skills you need to uncover the origins of the spammers, con artists, and identity thieves that plague the Internet. Targeted primarily at the developer community, `Internet Forensics` shows you how to extract the information that lies hidden in every email message, web page, and web server on the Internet. It describes the lengths the bad guys will go to cover their tracks, and offers tricks that you can use to see through their disguises. You'll also gain an understanding for how the Internet functions, and how spammers use these protocols to their devious advantage.

The book is organized around the core technologies of the Internet-email, web sites, servers, and browsers. Chapters describe how these are used and abused and show you how information hidden in each of them can be revealed. Short examples illustrate all the major techniques that are discussed. The ethical and legal issues that arise in the uncovering of Internet abuse are also addressed.

Not surprisingly, the audience for `Internet Forensics` is boundless. For developers, it's a serious foray into the world of Internet security; for weekend surfers fed up with spam, it's an entertaining and fun guide that lets them play amateur detective from the safe confines of their home oroffice.

User review
A great intro
I disagree with the opinion that only people who know nothing about security would get anything out of this book. I am network infrastructure engineer for routers and switches, have past experience with Microsoft OS's, and have a security+ certification. I am NOT a security expert or computer forensics specialist but I have some security knowledge and I really enjoyed this book.

You won't become a security expert reading this book but It's an interesting and educational read for someone with some technical background who would like a surface level introductory. For me, this was a pleasure/entertainment read and I wasn't looking to use it as the basis for a career as a security expert.

I do like that the author provides real examples that you can try out yourself to explore further.

User review
Very good and well organized
Internet Forensics
By Robert Jones
October 2005
Pages: 238
ISBN 10: 0-596-10006-X | ISBN 13: 9780596100063

Very nice. This book covers various interconnected internet security issues including email forensics, the inner workings of SMTP, spam, phishing, hacked spam-bot servers, proxy servers, anonymous surfing, and DNS. This is a relatively easy read considering the topics and the book is generally written in such a way as to tie all the topics together into a cohesive analysis. This was helpful since real-world situation never involve only one of these technologies but instead require a progression. The book discusses both theory and practical application.

I found the information helpful and would like to see the next edition cover each topic with more depth. Also I would like to see more variation of the email topics. For example, a section on Outlook/Exchange specific emails, IMAP protocol emails, etc. could be useful. There were some sections that would benefit from more examples as well. For instance, a section on how to dissect Microsoft Outlook formatted emails using Cygwin or Linux would have been a nice edition.

I definitely recommend it and enjoyed studying the contents.

Summary:

- Very good advice for both professional in the computer security field, hobbyist, and those concerned with personal computer security.
- Focus is on practical advice and examples




User review
Superb Compendium of Netlore
For me, this is an excellent book! Like Mr. Herrington, I would not recommend it for everybody. But, if you have a technical background,
like myself, and are intensely interested in the dynamics of the internet, then this book will complement your existing knowledge in more than one area. It is well-written, pithy and truly lives up to its title.
Thank you, Mr. Jones

User review
Incomplete, cursory, and unfocused
O'Reilly has had a hard time with their computer security lineup since they started expanding it a few years ago. While they have tried to focus on tight subjects with short volumes (this book at about 220 pages is no exception), these books often wind up being cursory treatments of the subjects, and in some cases downright wrong.

Sadly, Internet Forensics is not an exception to this rule. While I like this book more than some of the other recent O'Reilly security books, that isn't saying much. We've come to expect clear, authoritative books or inspired tricks and tips type martial from O'Reilly's authors, and instead we're given unfocused, incomplete pages.

To be fair, the topic of Internet Forensics is broad, not very well focused, and no one has written a good book on the subject. It's coming into the foreground, especially in this past year, as threat analysis has become popular. This is a new, wide open field, covering a broad range of malware, spam, phishing, and malicious website analysis coupled to tracking the origin and leading to takedown of the materials. However, this book doesn't really do a good job of much of that. And, at the end of 2006, some of the material feels positively quaint (even though it came out in late 2005). Although the author has defined his target audience in the introduction (infosec professionals, and software developers and IT operations people), I don't think they're well served with this offering.

Chapter 1, an introduction to the book, is short and scattershot. Nothing promised in the preface is really delivered (no overview of spam, phishing, or other threats). Instead, it's just some writing with little focus. This tone carries throughout the book. Chapter 2 covers the basics of IP addressing (what the heck?! if you don't assume your readership knows this, they're in the wrong place), and then talks about DNS lookups with dig and whois. The people reading this should know how to use these tools already, where are the suggested requirements for the reader? Sadly, no tips on disambiguating whois results (p 22) are given, not an unexpected finding in this book. And we start with the inefficient Perl scripts, too. All in all, we're not off to a good start.

Chapter 3 covers email, and sadly we waste time on the basics of email headers, and then go into making very good use of them. The coverage here is inconsistent and again, unfocused. By the time you finish chapter three with `is it really spam?`, you're left wondering what the heck the author wanted you to learn. Chapter 4 is slightly better, focusing on on URL obfuscation. Sadly, none of the techniques given really hold up all that well any more. Again, we start with some basics and try and get somewhere, but along the way we're distracted and we've never really gotten a good sense of what's the objective.

Chapter 5 on websites tries to cover some ground, but again, it's too unfocused. We talk about mirroring a site (why `wget -r` isn't listed, which is a common way of getting a malicious phishing site or directory, I don't know) and we even talk about SQL injection, but I don't know what the author is really after. It feels like random observations thrown in with no overall goals. Chapter 6 talks about web servers, and we talk about headers and redirection, and then delve into Netcraft stats (why?) and honestly I'm not clear what was useful here. This felt more like introductory material than anything useful. If the readers are infosec professionals, they should know what a web server header looks like and how to properly fingerprint the server.

Chapter 7 is the complement to that, and talks about your browser. Again, some useful info, but it's incomplete. No real discussions about why you want to alter things other than some basic concepts. Chapter 8 talks about file contents, and there's some interesting basics on examining Word docs (track changes, strings, etc) but aside from some basics, there's not much great there. Sadly, no discussions on how to un-redact a PDF are given, just that it's been a problem.

Chapter 9, which is a nice departure from solid technical materials, comes up short. It's incomplete and disappointing. Chapter 10 talks about pattern detection and signature creation, but again, this could have been beefier.

Chapter 11, `case studies`, is OK, but some better treatment to tie the lessons learned (or hopefully imparted) would have been nice. Finally, Chapter 12, `taking action`, isn't very useful. No real great info or insight is here, and if you think that you'll be calling police departments about every phishing site, you're in for a sad wake up call -- there's just no way you can do that. One of the comments made in this chapter, specifically wanting to see a community response, tells me that the author (Jones) isn't well connected to the community that actually does track and respond to these threats.

Internet Forensics is a poor attempt at this broad subject. While I appreciate the scope of what the author is trying to do, the execution is weak and suffers from a lack of focus or discipline. A book twice this size covering a fraction of the material, well executed, would have been a better offering. If you feel you must get this book, make sure you get it at a steep discount.

User review
Amazingly bad
This book should be titled, Internet Security for Complete Idiots. If you think it's a good book, it's because you don't know much about Internet security. If you're a security professional and you think it's a good book, find a new career.